


Fluid Architecture

by puckling



Category: Generation Kill, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Justice League & Justice League Unlimited (Cartoons)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Canon-Typical Violence, Country Music, Crossover, DADT, Intoxication, M/M, Professors, Space Opera, Superheroes, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-15
Updated: 2015-12-15
Packaged: 2018-05-06 20:23:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5429585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/puckling/pseuds/puckling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five Songs Walt and Ray never listened to and one they did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fluid Architecture

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sharksdontsleep](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sharksdontsleep/gifts).



> This fic contains some references to canon violence as well as canon typical language. 
> 
> ***
> 
> She probably doesn't remember this, but I initially wrote part of this story in the Gen Kill LJ comm, and then promised Sharksdontsleep rest of this fic. I started this gdoc on July 12, 2010. The better part of six years later I finally finished it. For you frond. <3 
> 
> A million thanks to Midnightbex, my better editing half and all around awesome beta. Without her I would be a lesser writer, this story would not be nearly as good, and Trombley would constantly be Trombly. Any remaining "Trombly"s are my own fault. 
> 
> It's been five years, so I don't remember everyone who I definitely bounced things off of, but I do remember Zarathuse looked over a section, and Mailundi chipped in with a last minute Southern consultation. This Connecticut-born Yankee thanks them for that.

**1) Werewolves in London**

Even though Brad gave Ray what might possibly be the worst STD in the history of mankind he won’t come to the bar. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Ray says. “I’m growing fangs and a full fur coat once a month and you won’t take me to meet your werewolf friends?”

“They’re not my friends,” Brad says crankily. “And if I came it would violate the agreement. I’ve negotiated for you to meet with Lupin but that’s the best I can do.”

Ray just stares at Brad, letting him know that he totally sees through the weakass excuse Brad’s trying to pull. Apparently Brad has some sort of _thing_ about Lupin that Ray doesn’t even want know about. Brad gives him his best Iceman glare back, but that shit was a lot more effective before Ray started sucking Brad’s cock on a regular basis. It’s a bit hard to intimidate someone who can completely take you apart using their tongue and a bit of teeth.

Brad’s apparently determined to be a complete dick about this. Ray could spend all evening fighting with him about it, but after four years in the Marines and a year and a half of whateverthisis with Brad, he’s learned to pick his fights. “Fine,” he snaps. He pushes Brad off the bed. Brad blinks up at him from the floor. Doesn’t look like his high and mighty ass was expecting that. “You’re sleeping on the couch,” Ray tells him, before rolling over and pulling the covers up.

***

Ray’s woken up when a giant hulking werewolf climbs into his bed and starts spooning with him. “I’ve arranged it so that Walt can come with you.” Brad sounds somewhat apologetic, which for him is practically a groveling statement of love complete with candy and flowers. Brad’s lucky that Ray loves him because he is a first class emotionally repressed gay werewolf freak and no one sane would put up with this shit.

“Okay,” Ray says. He rolls over so that Brad is the little spoon and Ray’s plastered up against his back. He gnaws a little bit on Brad’s shoulder because, hey, it’s not like he can catch lycanthropy _again_. “Now go to sleep.”

***

Werewolves like to hang out in greasy spoon diners. Or at least these werewolves do. The booths are red vinyl and they’ve got a jukebox nestled in the corner. The waiters smell funny and Ray’s lip keeps curling up no matter how hard he tries to stop it. “You know, these pancakes aren’t half bad,” Walt says, pouring more syrup over a stack of pancakes. “I might even come here again.”

“Walt,” Ray hisses, “this is the _enemy_. Stop complimenting their breakfast foods.”

“No one’s shot at us yet,” Walt points out, shoveling another forkful into his mouth. “They can’t be that bad.”

“That’s very supportive of you Walter, thank you,” Ray says. He’s pretty sure that his mother would smack him round the head for sass, but this place has him on edge. He’s a little glad Brad’s not here, to be honest. Brad would get all quiet and tense, and Ray would get loud and obnoxious to make up for it and they would probably end up shooting their way out. They could totally handle it, but it might get messy. 

“No problem,” Walt says, rolling his eyes. “I don’t mind going with my werewolf best friend for some sort of supernatural showdown because his boyfriend’s being pissy.”

“Point,” Ray concedes. The vinyl’s sticky and Ray spends a minute putting his hand down and listening to the sound it makes when he peels it off. “You know, we should get you some sort of support group or something,” he tells Walt. “PFWG.”

“Paf-wag?”

“Parents and Friends of Gay Werewolves. You and Fick and Mrs. Colbert and my mom and Brad’s dad can be founding members. We’ll get you little camo rainbows and everything.” 

“I don’t think rainbows come in camo,” Walt says. He’s finished his pancakes and he looks like he’s seriously considering licking the plate. Ray would have just gone for it, but Walt likes to pretend he has manners. 

“I have full faith that you’ll come up with something,” Ray tells Walt. He uses his straw to swish the ice water around in his cup.

“Now I have to come up with something?” Walt asks. “I thought that you were coming up with a support group for me.”

“It’s so that you guys can support each other in helping to support all of your gay werewolf friends and family,” Ray says earnestly. 

“Which is...you and Brad,” Walt says, propping his chin on his hands. 

Ray takes a sip of his water. “The gay werewolf community is a small community, but it’s time to come out of the closet. And the cage.”

“You are so full of shit,” Walt says, but he’s smiling and Ray knows Walt loves his pal Ray-ray, so it’s all good. 

The bell at the door tinkles, and Lupin walks in. Even with the scars he’s an unassuming presence, but the werewolf manning the counter nods respectfully at him as he walks towards Ray and Walt’s booth. Ray’s shoulders are so tight he could probably bounce quarters off his back. Walt looks wary but he still stands politely when Lupin is finally standing in front of them. 

“Walt Hassar,” he says and sticks his hand out. Lupin shakes it and introduces himself. Brad could probably place the accent more specifically than “English” but Brad caught this whole periodic furry thing while he was hanging out with the Royal Marines, so that’s not such a great trick after all. 

“Would you mind if I talked with your friend alone?” Lupin asks. His hands are in his coat pockets but besides that he’s doing a fairly good impression of harmless civilian. Walt still waits on Ray’s nod before he smiles easily and wanders off to go poke the jukebox. He’s still within eyesight and easy sprinting distance and Ray appreciates the back up. 

Lupin sits down at the table and orders a cup of tea from a waitress whose biceps are possibly bigger than Ray’s thighs. She studiously ignores Ray as she writes down Lupin’s order. “I’m sorry for meeting you here,” Lupin apologizes softly as she walks away. “But they’re my hosts while I’m in the States and it would be suspicious for us to have any more talks at your house.”

“Sure,” Ray says tensely. They descend into an awkward silence that is the mother of all awkward silences. For a second Ray is seriously pissed off with Brad, because what the fuck is this whole secrecy and meeting up with strange foreigners in unfriendly diners shit? Then all of the sudden he hears the distinctive “bah bah bah bah buh ba ba ba” of Warren Zevon’s piano. Walt’s slouched against the jukebox with his mouth tilted into a smile. Lupin closes his eyes, just for a second, but the music’s clearly forcing him to marshal some sort of inner calm. Ray feels distinctly more cheerful. 

“Right. So tell me more about this Lord Voldemort dude.” 

**2) Son of a Preacher Man**

A degree in Philosophy with a concentration in Marxism and the 19th century doesn’t really translate to “paying job” outside of academia. Hell, with an undergraduate degree it doesn’t even really translate to a job _in_ academia. It wouldn’t have been a problem if Ray’s law school scholarship had come through, but apparently the University of Virginia doesn’t approve of its law students getting caught with pot two weeks before they finish their undergraduate degrees. After a bit of pleading Vanderbilt agrees not to press charges and to let him graduate, but Ray’s still out on his ass with no law school to take him in after the cap and gown come off. 

Ray figures that if he promises to mend his ways and pinky swears never to do it again he can probably get in somewhere else, but that still leaves the money issue. His mom would help if she could, but she can’t, and besides, Ray wouldn’t put that on her. It’s his own damn fault.

If he works his ass off for a few years he probably won’t be drowning in debt once he comes out of law school, but that still requires a job. After he applies to six law firms, a brokerage, a real estate place, two town attorney’s offices (Nashville and Hendersonville), the ACLU, the Vanderbilt admissions office, the provost’s office, the legal departments of two IT places, and every single coffee shop in Nashville, Ray’s not feeling too optimistic about that.

Ray’s driving randomly around when he stops, and says, to no one in particular, “Fuck it.” He turns into the parking lot of the glass building on his right, walks up to the woman sitting at the front desk and smiles his most charming smile. “Excuse me, but I’d like to see the president.”

“Do you have an appointment, hon?” she asks. Her nails are bubblegum pink and her voice is all friendly and Nashville, but she doesn’t pick up the phone to dial him in. According to the little label on the front of her desk her name is “Theresa McIllryth”.

“‘Fraid not,” Ray says, lifting and dropping a shoulder. “But I still think that the president should see me.”

“I’m sorry,” Theresa says, and she even does sound a little bit sorry, “but we don’t just sign people who walk in off the street.” She pulls a piece of paper out from underneath the desk and hands it to him. “You’ll need to send a demo tape to the address on the top. It has to conform to the specifications, and we’ll send you a reply after someone listens to it.”

Ray looks at the logo on the top of the paper. He’s apparently walked into Levi Johnson Jay’s Country Music Label. Country’s not really his thing, but whatever, he grew up in Missouri, he knows the territory. “Just a piece of advice though?” she adds, “Don’t do Johnny Cash. Everyone does Johnny Cash.”

“Actually,” Ray says, “I was thinking more on the business side.”

Theresa eyes him critically. “And this ain’t some sort of plan to sneak in and get yourself recorded?”

“When my metal band opened for Limp Bizkit someone threw a beer bottle at me,” Ray tells her. “Kinda killed any musical ambitions I had.”

“Hmmmmmm.” Her gaze stops at the sunglasses he’s got propped on top his head. The problem with having a trademark that you didn’t actually pick, or at least pick on purpose, is that once you have, it’s your _thing_. You can’t not have your thing, even if your thing is cheap imitation Elvis glasses that you put on at a frat party sophomore year and got you called 'sunglasses dude' for the rest of college. They’re also pretty excellent for hiding behind while checking out straight dudes’ asses, so Ray’s never really tried to get rid of them. He may have to reevaluate that choice. 

“You have any experience working in business?” she asks, clearly expecting the answer to be no.

“I’m really friendly,” Ray says. He smiles again. This time he aims more for “sad puppy” in the hope that he can at least get a pity interview. Theresa examines Ray before coming to a decision. 

“One sec,” Theresa says, holding a finger up and dialing with the phone tucked under her neck. “Dawn? Yeah, it’s me. I think that there’s someone here you might want to talk to.”

Dawn turns out to be Levi Johnson Jay’s personal secretary (though apparently he’s supposed to call the job “administrative assistant”) and she’s eight and a half months pregnant. With twins. Ray didn’t even know that people’s stomachs could get that big.

“So do you know how to work email? Schedule appointments? Connect a conference call?” she asks. “How fast can you type? Are you organized?”

Ray’s good on the email front, can fake the appointments, has never met a phone he couldn’t make roll over and beg, types like a monkey on crack, and lies like a mofo on the organized thing. “Oh yeah,” he says, nodding. “I find it really annoying when files aren’t alphabetized.”

“Dawn!” someone shouts from out from the office. “Did that Suzie sign the contract yet?”

“It’s in the contracts folder in the third cabinet on your left, second draw, under ‘O’ for ‘Orzone’,” she says, raising her voice and cranking her head back towards the open door. “I also emailed you a scanned copy after her agent faxed it to us.” She moves her mouse around a bit and adds, “On the 9th.”

Ray is beginning to suspect that this job wouldn’t really cater to his talents. But Dawn hasn’t kicked him out yet, so that’s at least something.

“You wouldn’t be expected to do all of Jay’s paperwork and meetings, of course,” she says, turning back to him. “We’re having Theresa take that over, but we need a receptionist to work the front desk since the girl we were going to get to do it ended up moving out west with her boyfriend. You’d be accepting packages from couriers, signing visitors in, forwarding calls and making sure that no one without an appointment was let in. Things like that. Do you think you’d be able to do that?”

“Of course,” Ray says.

Surprisingly, she hires him.

A week later he’s pissing in a plastic cup for the drug test (which he passes, fuck you very much, UVA) and two weeks after that he’s sitting behind the desk with a plaque that now reads “Joshua Person”.

There are about fifty people who work for Levi Johnson Jay, and Ray meets most of them his first morning. The techs from the recording team seem pretty cool. Both the men and women are nerds who wear t-shirts and khakis and talk incomprehensibly about proper mic pick up and bass balance, shit Ray never paid attention to even when he was in a band. All the rest of the men wears suits and the women wear tailored skirts with heels. The suits smile blandly when they’re introduced and Ray can practically see them forget his name as soon as they hear it. Their eponymous president and CEO wears a pair of blue jeans, a plaid shirt, a black ten gallon hat, cowboy boots, and a bolo tie. “I’m glad to hear you’ve come on board,” he twangs as he shakes Ray’s hand. His accent is so thick it’s hard to tell that he’s speaking English and Ray can’t place it.

“Happy to be here, sir,” Ray says back.

“I’m jus’ happy that we got Dawn outta here before she gave birth in the middle of the office!” He tucks his thumbs into his belt loops and rocks on his heels. Ray’s half convinced that Jay is faking the accent. The six Country Music Awards prominently displayed on Jay’s desk are pretty fucking sweet though. Ray particularly enjoys the contrast with the super cheesy bust of Elvis hanging out on top of the bookshelf. 

“I’ll try and fill her shoes,” Ray says. There’s a crooked poster of Johnny Cash on the wall opposite the couch. He glares at it out of the corner of his eye for ten minutes while Jay talks about the company mission of bringing “true Southern flavor back into country”. The frame is tilted just enough to mess with Ray’s depth perception. 

Jay shakes his hand and slaps him on the back when Ray walks out the door. “Gimme a holler if you’ve got any questions!”

“Will do, sir,” Ray says, firmly suppressing his eyebrow raise. 

“He’s from Connecticut,” Theresa explains later while she’s going over the phone system with him. She says Connecticut with the vague scorn people born in Nashville have for Yankee transplants. “He overcompensates. Don’t comment on it, it just makes it worse.”

“What, does he walk in with a lasso or something?” Ray can’t help but ask. He probably shouldn’t be mocking the boss on his first day, but Jay’s fake Southern is so overblown that it’s moved past strange and into amazingly hysterical.

Theresa just sighs. “We’ve all got our little quirks.”

The sound techies treat him to lunch at a nearby BBQ place for his first day, and he checks in four people when they walk into the building that afternoon. It’s kinda boring, but Ray downloads AIM onto his computer and he harasses his friends when he doesn’t have anything better to do. He’s making It work for him.

His second day he meets Walt Hassar. If he had known he would have worn his lucky red Superman boxer briefs, but it’s hard to plan for life-altering moments. 

At first he thinks that Walt’s a visitor because almost everyone else at Jay’s is over thirty. “Hello,” Ray says, “Do you have an appointment?” He actually sounds like a mature responsible adult and shit when he says it. It’s kinda amazing and Ray’s a little impressed by his own act.

“Where’s Theresa?” Walt asks. His face scrunches a little bit and he adjusts the shoulder strap on his messenger bag. He’s dressed halfway between the geek chic of the techies and the formal suits, wearing a button up shirt and a pair of slacks. His tie is the same blue as his eyes. Ray thinks about pulling Walt in by his tie, getting him close enough to bite his lower lip, but he’s pretty sure that would constitutes sexual harassment. He can’t imagine that anyone would actually admit to being harassed by a secretary, but job hunting fucking sucks so he smiles and introduces himself. 

After they shake hands (Walt’s fingers have calluses, but his palms are soft) and everything’s been sorted out, Ray asks, “So what do you do here exactly?”

“Gopher,” Walt says, leaning against Ray’s desk. “I just kinda do whatever they ask me to.”

It sounds like a bullshit job. But Ray’s trying to play nice, so instead of insulting Walt’s livelihood, Ray invites him out for lunch.

Turns out that Walt doesn’t talk much, but he seems happy to listen to Ray’s monologues. 

“No, I fucking swear,” Ray says shaking his finger at Walt, “we mocked him for weeks because it was bright blue, like a fucking smurf or something. Which is why I always check what sort of shit someone has been eating before they give me a blowjob.”

“Remind me again how you got hired,” Walt says, but he’s smiling.

“I got hired because I’m _awesome_ ,” Ray tells him, signalling the waitress for the check.

“Awesomely retarded,” Walt says back. Ray knew there was a reason he was going to like Walt (ignoring the whole part where he looks like a nice boy Ray would have way too much fun corrupting).

They go back to work and Ray reinstates himself behind his desk so that Theresa can head out for her lunch.

“Have you tried the Thai place yet?” Walt asks. He’s got his messenger bag slung over his shoulder, but he hasn’t headed back to his desk yet.

“Naw,” Ray says. He didn’t even know that there was a Thai place, but it sounds like a good opportunity to grab lunch with Walt. “Wanna go there tomorrow?”

“Sure,” Walt says with a smile.

Jay walks in the glass door and nods at them. Today he’s got on a white hat with a red, white, and blue ribbon round the crown. “Nice hat, sir,” Ray can’t help but say. “Very patriotic.”

“Why thank you,” Jay says, tipping the brim at him as he walks into the building. There’s a bit of a strut in his walk.

Fortunately Walt and Ray manage to wait until the door is firmly closed before they burst into laughter. “Homes,” Ray says, “homes, you honestly cannot expect me to say nothing. Honestly. That shit is just unreal.”

“He’s not a _bad_ boss,” Walt says, marshaling a defense even though he clearly acknowledges the superiority of Ray’s arguments. “He hired me even though he knows I’m only here hoping to get recorded.”

“You sing?” Ray puts his elbows on the desk and plants his chin on his hands. He looks up at Walt and bats his eyelashes. “Sing me something?”

Walt laughs and pushes at Ray. Ray holds his arms out in surrender and leans back in his swivel chair. “Seriously though, sing something for me,” Ray says again.

“What do ya want me to sing?” Walt asks, adjusting his messenger bag.

“ _Son of a Preacher Man_ ,” Ray says, settling into his chair.

“Seriously?” Walt asks.

“It’s a classic!” 

“Your dad’s not a preacher by any chance, is he?” Walt asks, looking at Ray the same way his mom used to when Ray insisted that he had already done his homework.

“Maybe,” Ray says. Actually, his dad is an unemployed bastard who drinks too much and lives in a sad little trailer, but he doesn’t need to talk about that with Walt. He bats his eyelashes again.

Walt shakes his head. “Fine. But you’re paying for lunch tomorrow.”

“I wouldn’t even _dream_ of doing otherwise,” Ray reassures him.

Walt looks both ways, scoping out the area and making sure that no one’s coming, before he starts singing. “Billy-Ray was a preacher’s son...”

He’s not half bad, Rays thinks as he watches Walt relax into the song. He’s certainly a much better singer than Ray, though that’s like saying Brad Pitt’s hotter than Arnold Schwarzenegger. He even hits the high notes without mangling them, which is pretty hard to pull off for a dude.

Walt finishes and tilts his head at Ray. “Damn yo,” Ray says, smiling at him. “I’d sign you.”

The corners of Walt’s lips curl up in a smile. “Lunch tomorrow then?”

“Lunch tomorrow,” Ray says, draping his right arm around the back of his chair. “I will treat you to such a lunch that all other lunches will seem like mere snacks. Fake lunches. Lunches that don’t even deserve the name.”

The next day Walt gets a massaman curry and Ray gets sauce on his face, but Walt just laughs, especially when Ray describes the red, white, and blue striped button up that Jay walked in wearing that morning. Ray told him that it was a fine show of national pride. He’s decided to try and provoke Jay into wearing an actual flag to work as a cape. 

Their lunches out become a thing. They’re basically work besties, gossiping about what sartorial choices Ray’s goaded Jay into and whether or not Walt should start up his own band. Ray feels like he’s a twelve-year-old girl and considers getting matching half-heart friendship charms. “Seriously,” he tells Walt at lunch, “I think I spend more time with you than anyone else I know. And you don’t even put out or anything!”

Mary-Heather, their waitress, drops the check in front of Walt. “You don’t put out either. Besides, I’m paying for your lunch,” Walt says, slipping a twenty into the little black folder and sliding it to the side of the table.

“And I’m glad you’re a liberated woman,” Ray reassures him, “but I paid for your lunch yesterday. It doesn’t count.”

“We don’t actually hang out outside of work,” Walt says, smiling at Mary-Heather as she takes the money.

“Yes we--” Ray starts, and then he actually pauses to think. “Huh, no, fuck me, we don’t. That should change. Hey Walt? Wanna go get shitfaced with me?”

“On a Wednesday?” Walt asks, taking his change back from Mary-Heather.

“Don’t give in to the artificial time constructs of the man,” Ray tells Walt as they walk out of the restaurant. “Rebel against the capitalist conformity and bourgeoisie dictates of the forty hour work week.”

“Speaking of the bourgeoisie,” Walt says as he pushes the door opened and waits for Ray to walk through, “I saw Jay this morning. He was wearing a belt buckle the size of my hand. Shaped like Tennessee.”

“The proletariat should strike at the upper class using all tools possible,” Ray says and shrugs. “I figure if I get him going big enough there’s a chance that he’ll impale himself on one of the pointy bits, which would at least be funny to explain to the ambulance on the phone.” 

After work they park downtown by the river, leaving Ray’s car in a lot that’s going to absolutely gouge him for the privilege of using a few feet of asphalt. They bar crawl till they hit a western bar, with saddles on the walls and cowhide bar stools and a pool table in the corner. Jay would probably love it. They settle in for the night and start on the serious drinking. _Sweet Home Alabama_ plays approximately four times in the first two hours they’re there. Ray nurses a whiskey sour and watches Walt as he sings along with the background music, smiling and with his eyes closed. Fuck, he’s really too good to be pulling this gopher shit. Walt should be able to make his living singing, should have his own backup band and a guitar like that Gibson Ray knows Walt’s got his eyes on. Ray’d buy it for him if he could.

“Hey Walt,” he says instead, slipping off his stool. He’s not unsteady, not just yet, but he feels the alcohol round the edges of his balance. “Get your hick ass over here so we can shoot some pool.” 

Walt’s a little bit further along in the liver marination process and he keeps leaning against the walls, against his pool cue, humming along to the music. It’s really distracting. The game looks close for a while, but Walt ends up winning, sinking the eight ball with his ass up in the air. Ray doesn’t mind too much. It’s a nice ass. He demands a rematch anyway, for form’s sake, and Walt has another beer while they’re playing. This time Ray wins. They fuck around for a while after that, drinking whiskey and setting up trick shots and trying to sink balls with their cues behind their backs, but finally at twelve Ray has to admit that it’s late for a weeknight. They call a cab and leave a tip for the bartender. They stumble out into the night with their arms slung around each other to wait for the cab to come.

“We should do this again,” Ray tells Walt as they sit on the edge of the sidewalk. “Though maybe with less alcohol. Tomorrow morning’s going to be a stone cold bitch.” Ray’ll have to wake up even earlier than normal to cab back to the lot and get his car, and he is definitely not a morning person.

Walt just leans his head against Ray’s shoulder. There’s no one around so Ray strokes his hair, just like he would pet a cat. They’ve always been touchy-feely and Ray figures he can get away with it since they’re both drunk. They wait like that until the cab comes. 

“Hey,” Ray says, dropping Walt in the back seat and leaning forward to talk to the cabbie, “thanks for coming. If you could drop my friend off at Whitebridge and me off at--”

“Stay at my place,” Walt says.

“What?” Ray turns and asks him. Walt’s loose limbed and sprawled out, and Ray wants nothing more than to crawl between his thighs and see if he can get Walt’s eyes even more hooded. And Walt is inviting him to stay the night. But Walt is straight. There is something in this scenario that just does not fucking compute.

“I’ll drive you in tomorrow, we can get your car during lunch,” Walt says, tilting his head into the seat and closing his eyes. Walt dropped his car off at home before they headed out, so that’ll work.

“Oh, right. Thanks,” says Ray. 

Walt’s studio apartment has a bed and a futon and a few extra toothbrushes. Ray knows Walt has several dozen cousins and they all like to visit, so it’s no surprise he’s set up for visitors. Ray strips down to his boxers in Walt’s bathroom and brushes his teeth. It’s strangely intimate, standing mostly naked in Walt’s bathroom, using Walt’s mint toothpaste. He stares at the sink, looking at Walt’s stuff around the edges as he works up a lather. Walt apparently uses Arm and Hammer deodorant and some sort of green bar soap to wash his hands. Ray spits, and before he can turn on the faucet there’s a knock at the door.

“Yeah?”

“Mind if I brush my teeth?” Walt asks from the other side of the door.

“It’s your apartment yo, knock yourself out,” Ray says as the door opens, revealing a shirtless Walt.

For lack of anything better to do, or maybe in order to stop anything truly egregious from leaving his mouth, Ray shoves his loaner toothbrush back in his mouth and starts brushing again. If Walt notices the toothpaste in the sink he doesn’t say anything.

They stand next to each other in silence, scrubbing at their teeth. They’re sobering up, and Walt meets Ray’s eyes in the mirror calmly. They keep eye contact the entire time they brush and Ray has No Fucking Clue what that means. Walt turns on the faucet and leans down to spit and Ray follows suit, taking a sip of water and then spitting again. Walt turns the faucet off.

Ray stands up and turns towards Walt, towards the door and his futon beyond that, intending to wish Walt goodnight then sack out. Instead, Walt plants his hand against Ray’s sternum, fingers spread wide, and kisses him. The first thing Ray thinks is _Walt tastes like toothpaste_. The second is _Holy fucking shit, I never thought this would happen_. The third, as Walt licks his way into Ray’s mouth, _Damn, he’s a good kisser_. Then Walt tugs him towards the bed and not much more thinking happens that night.

The next morning Walt calls in sick. Five minutes later Ray does the same. “You’re not feeling well,” Theresa says suspiciously.

“Right,” Ray tells her, and then coughs a bit. He knows he sounds way too happy for someone who’s supposed to have an awful fever, but Walt’s wearing boxers and making pancakes. He’s so happy he’s half tempted to burst out in song.

“Okay,” she says, still sounding dubious. “Feel better.”

“Thanks,” Ray says as he hangs up. Walt turns off the stove and brings over two plates piled with pancakes and a bottle of fake maple syrup. They both dig in and just as Ray’s finishing up and about to suggest since hey, Walt’s almost naked, and he’s pretty much naked, perhaps they could do something with all that nudity, Walt says, “So I’ve been thinking.”

Generally Ray is pro-thinking. He didn’t spend four years banging out a philosophy degree without engaging the old noggin fairly often, but when it comes to relationship bad news bears that phrase is only trumped by “Maybe we should take a break”.

“I think,” Walt says, and Ray wonders how fast he can get his pants on after Walt kicks his ass out after the pity pancakes, “you should move in with me.” Then he steals the last bite of pancakes off of Ray’s plate and licks the syrup off his fingers, which is just dirty pool.

“You want me to do what?” Ray asks. It’s entirely possible that the way Walt is positively molesting his fingers has rendered Ray incapable of translating sounds into proper word noises.

“Move in with me,” Walt says again, like it’s the most logical thing in the world.

“Homes,” Ray tells him, trying to let Walt down gently, “you’re my best friend. And you’re...” Ray gestures at Walt, who’s sitting Indian style. Ray probably should feel guilty about the way he can’t stop looking at Walt’s crotch. “You’re pretty fucking amazing, but generally speaking it’s not really a good idea to move that fast.”

Walt put both their dirty plates on the floor and then settles his head in Ray’s lap. “How much is your rent?” he asks looking up at Ray.

“Seven fifty,” Ray tells him, “but I can afford that.” Huh. Somehow Ray’s hand is petting Walt’s hair. He’s not entirely sure when that started. Apparently Walt has very pettable hair. 

“Sure,” Walt says. “But how much are you spending on lunch each month?”

“Look, Walt,” Ray says, and he can feel himself getting pissed off, “I can afford that too, so don’t start suggesting I move in just so that I can save-”

“And how long before you’ve got enough saved up for law school?” Walt asks. 

And that’s where Walt’s got him. Because at his current rate Ray’s maybe going to be able to apply in five years. If he gets scholarships. And working at Jay’s isn’t bad, hell, it got Ray Walt after all, but five years is a fucking long time. He’s not sure that even Jay’s wardrobe will keep him occupied through five years as a receptionist. And here’s to hoping that Dawn doesn’t want her job back.

“I can do it on my own,” Ray tells him. “Or get a second job or something. Hell, I don’t know. But you shouldn’t fucking put yourself out just because you feel sorry for me.”

“You’re too smart to be working some temp job,” Walt says. He takes Ray’s hand and starts tracing his life lines. Ray stops himself from burying his other hand in Walt’s hair.

“And you’re too talented,” Ray fires back. “But just because neither of us should spend the next five, six years working for Jay doesn’t mean that we should rush this.”

Walt looks at him, scary calm. A part of Ray babbles that this is probably the look serial killers get right before they fucking murder people and he bets all of Walt’s neighbors will say how they thought he was such a nice boy, who would have ever known. But that’s mostly Ray’s sense of self preservation trying to distract him from how all he wants to tell Walt is _yeah, let’s do it_.

“I was in love with you five minutes after we met. I don’t think this is rushing it at all,” Walt says, like that’s not the most terrifying thing anyone has ever told Ray. Dirty pool, Ray’s preservation instinct is now screaming, change of topic, dirty pool!

“I, what? Wait, no, no, that is false, you are _not_ ,” Ray sputters. “We’re best friends.”

Walt looks at him like he’s crazy, but Ray’s not, the last time he tripped acid was in high school and there’s no fucking way he’s having flashbacks now. “Yes, we are, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be in love with you,” Walt says. “Do you not remember last night when I--”

“Regardless of last night when you were clearly overcome by some sort of drunken lust for my hot bod,” Ray says, “you’re not in love with me.”

“Ray,” Walt says in a tone that is scarily reminiscent of Ray’s mother’s “I love you despite your idiocy”, “we’ve been going on lunch dates for months. I made you pancakes. I stare at the dip in your collarbone all the fucking time.”

“We have not been dating,” Ray tells Walt. “I would have noticed that. I’m an observant motherfucker.”

Walt sighs and puts his head in Ray’s lap. At that point it’s impossible for Ray not to pet his hair so he just goes with it. “The two of us go out to lunch every day,” Walt says, looking up at him. “And you text me, all the time. Constantly.”

“Friends do that!” Ray protests. 

“You email me at one in the morning with links to Anymore saying it made you think of me,” Walt says, sounding a impatient. “And you stare at my ass when you think I’m not paying attention.”

“I thought it would flatter your vocal range,” Ray says, scrunching his nose, to let Walt know that his reason was perfectly legit, thank you very fucking much. Well, mostly legit. Well, he had at least _thought_ about Walt’s range, vaguely. “And you _weren’t_ supposed to notice that!”

“Are you really going to complain?” Walt asks, rolling his eyes. “‘Cause if we’re complaining, I’d like to say I waited for four months for you to fucking man up and kiss me, and in the end I had to do all the work myself.”

“Hey,” Ray says, because that is just an unfair accusation, “hey, I thought you were straight!” 

“I got you chocolate for Valentine’s Day,” Walt says. “I’m not sure how much more fucking obvious I could get.”

“Friends can get friends chocolate,” Ray says stubbornly. He’s going to lose this argument. He knows he’s going to lose this argument, he’s not even sure why he’s fighting against this so hard, but for some reason he can’t stop.

“In heart shaped boxes?” Walt asks, raising his eyebrows. “What, did you want me to get you a cock shaped box or something? I don’t think that would go over well at work.”

Ray opens his mouth but for once he can’t get a word in edgewise. “Ray,” Walt says, a little exasperated, a little fond. “It’s okay you didn’t realize. You know now.”

“How can you be sure?” Ray finally asks, after petting Walt’s hair for a while. “We hadn’t even seen each other outside of work till last night.”

“I spend more time talking to you than I do talking to anyone else,” Walt says. “Including my parents. We talk so much you didn’t even realize we’d never spent time together outside of work until I told you.”

And it’s true. But that still doesn’t mean Walt is in love with him, and it doesn’t make moving in a good idea. Damn, is Ray really going to have to be the mature responsible one here? Well shit.

“Give me six months,” Ray says. “Let’s trying this whole dating thing for six months and if at the end of it you still feel the same way we can talk about it.”

“Three,” Walt counters. “We’ve basically been dating for the past four months anyway.”

Ray opens his mouth to object but Walt’s looking up at him like he’s a particularly dim lobotomy patient, and well, Walt did get him chocolates for Valentine’s Day. Perhaps Ray should have caught on a bit sooner. “Three,” Ray agrees.

Walt stretches, satisfied. “I’ll hold you to it,” he says.

“I know,” Ray says. Walt resettles his head in Ray’s lap. “Hey Walt? Now that we’re dating are you finally going to put out on a regular basis?”

Walt’s smile is like watching the sun sneak over the horizon. “I thought you’d never ask.”

**3) We Didn’t Start the Fire**

Barring emergencies the Watchtower operated at a low hum, the chatter of a few dozen superheroes mixing with the soft rumble of the generators and support systems. It was louder in the mess hall and the observation deck but Ray and Walt were tucked in a nook looking out the thick glass plates towards Earth. The nook was small enough that Ray was standing in the edges of Walt’s aura, and the golden glow looked like candle light. “I’m ninety percent sure that’s Baghdad,” Ray said, pointing towards a twinkling smear on the globe beneath them. “I know it’s zero dark hundred down there, but it makes sense if you look at the pattern of the rest of the lights.”

“If you say so.” Walt sounded dubious. 

“The fact that you doubt your pal Ray-ray is hurtful to me,” Ray told him. “Am I or am I not Electrode Man?”

“You’re down on the roster as The Electric Slide,” Walt said, leaning back into the metal wall. The metal (some sort of silicon impregnated titanium) reflected the light of Walt’s aura. “I still think that was a really poor choice.”

“Fuck, Wally told me he was going to change that,” Ray said, looking out the window. Possibly-Probably-Baghdad didn’t actually look different from any of the other blobs of light that made up the cities below them. Ray felt a little cheated by that. 

“It’s Wally,” Walt said, “what did you expect? There’s a better than half chance he got distracted by like, rock ‘em sock ‘em robots. Or Gorilla Grodd.” They both snickered. There was no denying that out of the big seven the Flash totally had the lamest villains.

“Jesus,” Ray said, “I really hoped Wally would fix it. I don’t wanna talk to Batman, that guy’s a pedophile and he totally gives me the creeps.” 

There was a wide consensus amongst Bravo 2, officially renamed Task Force Hercules after the chemical goop explosion in the Baghdad warehouse, that Batman was really fucking fucked up. Considering the standards of Marines and superheroes that was a pretty impressive level of fucked up. Even Brad avoided him, though of course he wouldn’t admit to it. 

“Talk with Brad and he’ll talk with the LT and maybe he’ll talk with Superman,” Walt said. “You should have just let them pick out your name like they did for everyone else’s.” 

“Yeah, fuck that shit _Helios_ ,” Ray said. “We have to do this but I want to pick at least one part on my own.”

“Ray, you’re called the _Electric Slide_ ,” Walt said. “That’s totally a backwoods hick, whiskey-tango superhero name. I’m surprised that the League actually let you keep it.” 

Ray rested a hand against the window of the Watchtower. It was glass in the same way that a M40A3 sniper rifle was a weapon like the BB guns of Ray’s youth; technically true though they barely belonged in the same category. If Ray concentrated he could determine the crystal structure of the “glass” and how well it insulated. If he really, _really_ concentrated, he could mess around with the bonds and shatter it. That shit gave him a fucking hangover though, so he kept it to a minimum outside of missions. Besides, Zantanna had chanted a shitload of gibberish at the Watchtower to make it fairly tamper proof. Even if Ray went all super villain on the League’s ass he’d have to work around that. Uncle Sam spent three months drilling them on thinly veiled scenarios where they were supposed to “protect the country’s interests in emergency situations”, a few of which weren’t entirely retarded and might have actually taken down the League, but it still would be a pain in the ass. 

“Like I care about the opinions of a group of morons who voluntarily run around in spandex and pouches,” Ray said, with one last look at Possibly-Baghdad. He turned and he and Walt walked towards the main corridor. “Second rate haters can just fucking deal with how awesome I am or get out of the way.”

“Tell that to Big Barda,” Walt said. Walt’s glowing aura extended about a foot off his body, and Ray’s hand brushed through the outermost edges as they walked. “But let me get Lilley to record it before you do.” 

“I’ll have you know that Barda loves me and thinks I’m adorable,” Ray told Walt. Ray swung his hand a little closer to Walt. Touching the aura felt kinda like basking in a sunbeam, and sometimes Ray made Walt lounge in bed with him so he could to soak up all the warmth and general lazy-Sunday-morning feeling. Also because lounging in bed often lead to doing other things in bed as well. 

“Stop that,” Walt whispered, the tips of his ears flushing pink.

“I’m not _doing_ anything,” Ray said, biting the inside of his lips to stop a smile. “Just walking along, off duty superheroing, bantering, nothing out of the ordinary.”

Walt looked up and down the corridor before saying, “Stop thinking about sex so loudly. You know we’re in public.” 

Walt was classed as a low level empath since he only got a general read on people if they touched the aura, and it was mostly stuff like “Superman is devoted to justice!” which any two year old with working eyes could tell you. However, he picked up Ray’s feelings a lot better and more specifically, probably because he spent more time touching Ray than anyone else. That was not something either of them felt the need to inform any of the scientists who had analyzed them after the blast.

“We could go be in not-public,” Ray suggested, wiggling his eyebrows. Their bunks on the Watchtower were small, but it wasn’t like either of them were giants and Ray’s plans called for them getting all up close and personal anyways.

Walt looked tempted, biting at the inside of his lower lip. Ray didn’t even hide how smug he felt; if Walt was feeling it enough to make faces, Ray had already won.

“You’re the worst,” Walt told him, but he was smiling and glowing a little brighter than normal. “Let me check the monitor room to make sure nothing big is going down and then we can head back to the room.” 

“So devoted to duty,” Ray said, reaching out to ruffle Walt’s hair. “You’re a good example to all of us on the Task Force. I bet Superman would write a letter of commendation to your congressman.”

“You know where you can shove your letter,” Walt said, shoving him against the corridor wall.

“Thought you said you didn’t want to do that sort of thing in public,” Ray said, bouncing off of the wall and back into Walt, making sure their shoulders bumped up against each other and Ray ended up back inside of Walt’s aura. 

“Shut up Ray,” Walt said, as they walked into the main bay. Even after a year the view took Ray’s breath away, the curved blue, green, and white of the Earth dominating the lower half of the window. The first time Ray’d seen it he spent a good five minutes staring, ignoring Brad’s comments about inbred hicks who didn’t know how to close their mouths. 

When Ray looked at the command chair the Martian Manhunter was talking into a headset while Manimal stood behind him, looking bored. Walt was scanning through dashboard projected up against a wall, incidences all over the world that the Justice League was monitoring. Ray looked at the statuses next to each line, red, orange, green, a quick way to tell how fucked the Earth was at that particular time. There was one red, a few scattered oranges, but pretty much all green. 

“Corporal Person, Corporal Hassar,” the Manhunter said, taking off his headset and nodding in their direction. Ray was always a bit freaked out by the telepathic members of the Justice League. Despite what some people thought, Ray did actually filter what came out of his mouth. The idea of people rummaging through his head made him feel like someone was scoping right between his shoulder blades. “You are not on duty for another shift.” 

“We just wanted to make sure there weren’t any situations we should be aware of,” Walt said. Sometimes Walt was so earnest it made Ray’s teeth ache. Manimal rolled his eyes behind the chair. 

“Pirates have boarded a Japanese oil tanker in the Malacca Strait.” The Manhunter pressed a few keys, and the screen changed, zooming in on the dashboard and pulling up all the details for the one red status. “We have Aquaman and Green Lantern working with the Malaysian maritime police. The pirates have taken hostages, but the ship is surrounded. We expect the situation to be resolved shortly.”

“Roger,” Ray said, looking through a few aerial shots of the tanker, and skimming the first reports from Green Lantern. Ray and Walt would likely end up sorting out the tail end of the incident with whatever Justice League member that was assigned during their shift. It would keep till they get on duty. 

“We also have members of Task Force Hercules deployed to a bank robbery in Little Rock, Alabama. Big Barda and Vixen are investigating reports of poaching in the Republic of the Congo, and Batman’s assisting with some repairs on the International Space Station. Zatanna is on the ground monitoring the Charles De Gaulle airport as they haven’t rerouted inbound flights despite an approaching electrical storm. Both Pepsi and Coca Cola have appealed to the Justice League for help with a new ingredient disappearing en masse from their factories. Flash has been assigned the case and is headed down to Earth as we speak.” The Manhunter highlighted each orange status as he mentioned it, his face calm as he listed off the various situations that had the potential to go critical. He always looked calm. Ray wondered if it was the Martian equivalent of keeping your bearing, no matter what was going on around you. Manimal usually pulled duty with the Manhunter, Ray supposed he might know. Ray considered asking him for .5 seconds before deciding he didn’t care that much. 

“We’ll get briefed again when we come on,” Walt said with a nod. “Thanks for the update.” 

“Thank you, Corporal Hassar, Corporal Person.” The Manhunter nodded back before turning back to his own screen. Manimal mouthed “Kiss ass” at Ray, but Ray just stuck his tongue out. Between Iraq and the Watch Tower, where there wasn’t even Sergeant Major Sixta to shout them all into line, Bravo 2 had abandoned a lot of the formal trappings of Corps discipline. Ray didn’t miss it. 

He and Walt left the Monitor Room, headed down the steel corridor that would eventually lead to Walt’s quarters. Ray doesn’t even realize that he’s humming until Walt elbows him. “Quit that, you’re going to get it stuck in my head and I don’t even know the words.”

“Harry Truman, Dorris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray,” Ray sang at him, the only parts of the song that he remembers. “Dada dadaddada, Joe DiMaggio.”

“It’s like you don’t want to get laid,” Walt said, which was a filthy lie because Walt was going to sleep with Ray no matter what earworms he sang.

“Speaking of getting laid,” Ray said, gesturing at Walt’s door, which needed a thumbprint on the lock in order to open. 

“Shameless,” Walt said, but he put his thumb down and the door opened with a whoosh. 

Ray grinned and followed Walt in, the door sliding shut behind him. Walt likes that he’s shameless, especially when Ray does that thing with his tongue. 

Ray grins to himself. “I don’t want to know,” Walt said, turning around a pinning him to the wall. 

“But--” Ray said, before Walt kissed him. Ray kissed back, pushing a little. Not actually hard enough that he would budge Walt, who was surprisingly strong for such a short guy. 

“No,” Walt said, pulling back just enough to whisper against Ray’s lips. 

“Alright,” Ray agreed, and then neither of them spoke for a good long while. 

**4) Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton**

“Save me,” Ray moaned, burying his hands in his face. Poke just smirked at him from the doorway. 

“So which one of your classes is he in?” Poke asked, sitting down in the chair in front of Ray’s desk and kick his feet up. 

“Sexuality and Society in Modern Europe,” Ray said, rubbing at his cheeks in some sort of effort to make this entire fiasco less horrible. “He wanted to talk to me about this week’s reading. Which was on homosexuality in the USSR.” 

Poke laughed at him. “Shut up, do you even know how horrible it was to talk with him about men getting arrested over blow jobs for fifteen minutes? Fucking awful, like some sort of masochistic torture.”

“And he’s what, eighteen?” Poke asked, still laughing. Ray regretted the sympathetic noises he had made when one of Poke’s students from _Colonial Latin America_ had decided that he was a romantic rebel and handed in all her response essays in pink ink with hearts dotting the “i”s in her name. No way was Ray sharing his emergency tequila with Poke again. 

“Twenty one,” Ray said, massaging his temples. “Twenty two in June. Jesus Christ, he’s a fucking fetus.”

“To whom you want to do filthy things that were probably illegal in the USSR. Or at least against the rules of professional conduct.” Poke grabbed a pencil out of the mug on Ray’s desk and started flipping it across his knuckles.

“Not to mention DADT,” Ray said, opening up a game of solitaire on his computer. He might as well try and beat the high score Walt had posted on Monday. 

“Your boy’s ROTC?” Poke asked, tilting his head. “Damn, you do like to make your life difficult.” 

“He’s not my boy,” Ray said, dragging the ace of hearts into the upper right corner and avoiding Poke’s stare. “He’s applying to the Marine Corps for after graduation. I even wrote him a letter of recommendation.” 

“So he wants to be your boy,” Ray groaned and abandoned the game of solitaire to rebury his head, because fuck Poke, it was true, “he comes in here looking like jailbait and making eyes at you while in your sex class, and he wants to join the Marine Corps.”

Ray had a strict no-tequila-before-four-pm-except-during-finals-grading rule, but he figured that this probably counted as some sort of crisis. He opened the bottom draw of his desk and pulled out the handle and a shot glass. 

“So what the fuck is this kid’s deal?” Poke asked as Ray took his first shot. 

“Nate Fick?” Ray shrugged in reply. “Besides driving me mad with sexual torment I have no fucking clue.” 

They sat in companionable silence for a little, Ray taking a second shot and cursing the existence of too pretty students with cock sucking lips while Poke contemplated the bookshelf on Ray’s wall, probably judging it for being too white. 

“Maybe this is a plot by Encino Man to deny me tenure,” Ray finally said, putting the tequila and shot glass away. The interim history department chair was dumb as a rock. A particularly heavy and gray rock. During departmental meetings Ray sometimes wondered if his diplomas were forged and how much it would cost to buy a PhD off a cracker box. Since Ray had never been particularly good at keeping his mouth shut, everyone else got to hear about his opinions too. Needless to say Encino Man had not been pleased when Ray asked if he had had the lobotomy before or after his thesis defense. Godfather couldn’t come back fast enough. “Bust me for sleeping with a student.” 

“You know,” Poke said, dropping his feet back on the floor, “I almost joined the Marines. Just before I got my diploma.”

“I wouldn’t have guessed that,” Ray said, “What with the part where you regularly denounce the man. And the part where you kinda look at authority figures like they’re a personal affront to your intellectual freedom. And the part where--”

Poke interrupted with a smoothness borne of long practice. “It couldn’t be any whiter than academia, that’s for sure. Plus they probably would have better health care.” 

“Yeah, but enlisted pay fucking sucks,” Ray said. “Even worse than being a grad student.”

“Don’t tell me,” Poke said, strolling over to the section of books on Ray’s wall devoted to Vietnam era America and pulling out his copy of _Street Without Joy_. “You thought about signing up too.” 

“Before undergrad,” Ray said. “My high school recruiter almost had me sold, but I eventually decided that waking up at 5 am really wasn’t for me. Plus DADT.” 

“That would be an issue,” Poke said, flipping through the book. “Besides, you have almost as many issues with authority as I do. I bet you couldn’t keep yourself from mouthing off for more than five seconds and no way that shit would fly.” 

“Fortunately neither of us signed paperwork and now we’re both fine and upstanding members of academia living in the ivory tower,” Ray said, opening up minesweeper to try and distract himself. He figured the buzz from the tequila would probably kick in before his meeting with Walt, but Walt wasn’t some wide eyed first year just learning that most professors drank too much. 

“If you were an upstanding member of academia you wouldn’t be thinking about fucking your student,” Poke said, because he was a bastard and Ray officially was never letting him anywhere near his booze ever again.

“I hate you so much,” Ray told him, and then swore as he accidentally left clicked and blew up his entire game. 

“Two of the history department’s brightest and best, fucking around instead of making progress on articles or working on their classes. Must be a day that ends with ‘y’,” Brad said dryly from Ray’s door frame. He took up almost all of the entryway, and Ray could barely see Walt standing behind him.

“Stop fucking posturing over the fact you have tenure now and we don’t,” Poke told him, snapping Ray’s book shut and hitting Brad in the chest with it. “The whole department’s basically been sucking your cock since you showed up, you should at least leave Ray one undergrad.” 

“He’s not sucking my cock!” Ray protested, probably a bit louder than he should have considering the admin office was only five doors down the hall. The admins knew all and ruled all, but there was no point in giving them a leg up or advanced notice. He blamed the tequila for the tactical error. 

Poke just laughed, and fist bumped Brad on his way out the door, taking Ray’s book with him. 

“Undergrads Ray, really? I suppose it’s a step up from goats, but it’s a bit cliche,” Brad said. He took his glasses off to wipe them on his t-shirt which read “Property of the CalTech Department of History”. Brad only did shit like that to draw attention to his eyes, which Ray had, in a moment of drunken weakness at their first departmental holiday party, called “piercing”. And maybe also said that they made him want to roll over and beg. Ray can’t really remember, there had been a lot of eggnog. 

“I hate you too, you Aryan nation reject. Give me back our grad student and go harass someone who’s impressed by all your _History_ publications, you giant asshole,” Ryan said, moving some of the clutter on his desk so Walt could have a place to put his laptop down.

“Fine, but don’t think I’ve forgotten you promised to look over Walt’s paper before I submit it,” Brad said, turning on a heel and striding off. 

“You still owe me last month’s child support from your grant!” Ray shouted, half standing up from his chair, just to make sure that Brad heard him. 

Walt’s lips twitched, and he dropped his backpack next to Ray’s desk. “He left an envelope with Leah in the office,” Walt offered. “I think that’s got a check in it.” 

“I know custody battles can be hard on the children,” Ray said, sitting down and grabbing a stack of papers from his Sexuality and Society class. “But never think Mommy and Daddy love you any less because we argue about money.” 

“Sure thing Mom,” Walt said, booting up his laptop. “I’ll keep research monkeying with Dad and TAing with you, and I figure everything else will sort itself out.” That was one of the things Ray really liked about Walt; despite having interdisciplinary research and complex funding, he always focused on the long view, putting in the work to get there but not worrying too much about the future.

“That’s my boy,” Ray said, forking over all of the graded papers for Walt to enter into the departmental records. 

They set up a steady system, Ray grading papers while Walt recorded the grades, filed the papers, and pulled the appropriate material to be photocopied for next week’s reading. Grading wasn’t the world’s most exciting work, but it was engaging enough that Ray mostly stopped thinking about undergrads who were DADT violations just waiting to happen. Walt went in and out of Ray’s office to grab all the reading, but he was mostly done by the time Ray pushed aside the last of the papers. 

“And done,” Ray said, cracking his neck and stretching in his chair. He was pretty sure his back was going to give him grief later for the way he hunched over his desk, but it was worth it to not have any more left. “Twenty short response essays, all graded and ready to go back tomorrow during class, not that the children’ll appreciate how much of a bitch it was to power through all their interpretations of Freud.” 

“The children?” Walt asked, shuffling the papers into a loose pile. “You sure you ought to be calling them children if you want to fuck them?”

Ray sighed. “Close the door, my slightly older child. Also put on one of your young people music mixes as camouflage so we can have this conversation without half of the department listening in, and I’ll explain to you the details of my predicament.” 

Walt, because Ray got his hand on him when he was young and malleable, did as he was told. The first song was something with guitars and whiny boys that sounded like they didn’t get enough sun. A tragically perfect soundtrack for Ray’s story. 

“So…” Ray began, launching into an account of the first day of his senior level Sexuality and Society class. Nate had posited, stupidly but touchingly, that with the movement detaching sex from reproduction, and the subsiding of the AIDs crises, society was moving towards accepting queer sexualities. Of course his reading leaned heavily on a progressive idea of history, which Ray had to dispute, despite how much he personally hoped Nate was correct. 

Accompanied by several other songs by different whiny boys with guitars and Walt’s fond but slightly judgemental face, Ray rambled about Nate’s idealism, desire to make the world a better place, and upsettingly plush lips. “They’re like,” Ray paused, hand up in the air while he tried to come up with an appropriate description. “They’re pillow-y, but in an obscene way. Like one of those Japanese anime sex pillows.”

“I feel like I’ve learned way too much about your fantasy life in the last ten minutes,” Walt said, leaning back in rhythm to a particularly loud guitar riff. 

“Like Brad hasn’t paraded half the floozies he’s fucking through your office,” Ray said, waving his hand dismissively.

“You mean Dr. Platzer and Dr. Chen-Volmner?” Walt asked, referring to the computer science professor and the DOD chemist who had worked out some complicated arrangement regarding Brad’s free time that had the heterosexual men Ray knew half wild with envy. 

“Given Brad’s general hatred for all other humans, it’s really remarkable that he’s managed to keep that going for as long as he has without pissing off one or both of them,” Ray mused.

“I’m pretty sure they’re just using him for sex,” Walt said easily, because apparently Brad and Ray were raising him with loose morals in a broken home. “I don’t think they need to listen to him talk for that.” 

“Clearly we’ve failed you as responsible models of sexual behavior,” Ray said, shaking his head. 

“Well, since both of my academic parents are engaging in all sorts of sexual debauchery, are you going to do anything about the undergrad with the lips?” Walt asked, because he clearly took after Ray when it came to gossip. 

Ray looked at his hands. He’d lost the callouses he’d had after quitting his shitty minimum wage job pushing a broom around Walmart and leaving Missouri. He thought about how his hands had changed, how his palms weren’t rough from holding a broom and a mop, and the way that his thumbnail grew a bit slower now because he spent so much time typing. He wondered what marks a gun would have left, what his hands would have looked like as a Marine. “No,” Ray said, thinking of the choices 21 year olds make. “No, I don’t think that’s the way that things will work out after all.” 

**5) Diggin’**

“Ray, even if your family hadn’t been spacers for the last four generations, you can’t herd something that’s been extinct for two hundred years. What are you going to do, lasso a vat replicator?” Brad keeps flicking his knife open and closed and looming in the aluminum doorway. He’s a bit too big for the ship and it makes the cramped spaces seem even smaller. 

“In the last databurst they said that found bovine-like creatures on PX-1056. Ray could go herd those,” Walt offers helpfully. 

“I think the report also said that they spit acid,” Nate says from where he’s fiddling with the controls. 

“But see, that’s exactly what you’d want!” Ray says, tipping back in his chair and sticking his feet up on the curving wall. “Pre-marination. I bet the meat’s all tender and juicy and all you’ve got to do is toss it on the grill.”

“They had to rebuild an Explorer’s entire jaw after she got a face-full. She’s supposed to make a full recovery though,” Nate adds a bit absently. He peers closer at the screen and makes a satisfied sound. “Got it. The back left turbine on the second level is sucking vacuum. Person and Hassar, the two of you are going to have to go out in the shuttle and fix it up.”

“Isn’t that Trombley’s job?” 

“Trombley’s looking at the water system off the mess. The filter isn’t catching everything and apparently there was hair in the soup that was supposed to be lunch, and Cook had to serve left overs,” Nate says, turning in his chair to look at Ray. “I, for one, do not want to drink any of your unfiltered shower water.”

Ray gags, sticking a finger in his mouth to mime vomiting. “That’s nasty, I could have had little bits of Manimal in my meals and not even known it. Have you ever smelled him after a workout? Foul, absolutely foul.” 

“Trombley’s going to have everything fixed by the next chow,” Brad says, moving into the cockpit proper. “Now get out of my chair, Ray, and go fix the turbine.” 

“Yes Senior Navigator Colbert!” Ray says, springing to attention and tossing off a crisp salute. Ray can only be bothered to remember Brad’s his superior when he can use it to mock him. It’s especially nice when he can do it in front of the Captain and Brad can’t retaliate by putting Ray in a headlock. Nate gives them all a pretty long leash, but they still have to observe some of the niceties of the Explorers. Assaulting people in your chain of command would definitely be outside the acceptable bounds of behaviour. 

Walt rolls his eyes. “Come on,” he says, tugging on the back of Ray’s orange jumper, “let’s get this done and over with.” 

Ray follows along behind, noting that Brad is folding himself into the copilot’s chair, which probably means he and Nate are going to embark on one of their long, somewhat rambly discussions about the proper role of leadership in the depths of unknown space. It’s nice to know that Brad and the Captain are special friends who can be relied upon to keep each other from going completely crazy, but Ray wants no part of it. He’d rather spork out his own eyeball than take on the duties of command, and he doesn’t want to try and understand what goes on in the heads of people who do. He’s got his team, his coms, and his victor, and that’s all he wants to be in charge of. 

“Hey Walt,” Ray says, nudging him in the shoulder as they walk down the corridors to the transport bay. “You ever want to go all shiny-shouldered and get yourself a commision?”

“N’aww, that shit’s only useful if you want to go completely round the moon,” Walt says, crinkling his face. Walt has two little creases he gets above his eyebrows when he does that and Ray always wants to kiss him, directly between them.

“Word to the mother fucking street,” Ray agrees as they wait for the transport bay doors to stop hissing. They need the O2 to finish flooding the room before they could walk in, and it was always good for a two or three minute wait. “I’d rather work for a living.”

“You know Christeson almost went to Spacer Academy?” Walt asks, lifting his chin and looking at Ray out of the corner of his eye like he’s imparting a secret. “Had his offer in and everything before he went to the recruiters instead.” 

Ray whistles through his front teeth. “Bet he regrets that choice when he’s scuzzing the deck.” 

Walt shrugs. “He’s mostly okay with it. Says he wishes he had got to do Atmo Dive school though.” 

“Well lucky for us young Walter,” Ray says, ignoring Walt’s insistence that he isn’t _that_ much younger than Ray, “Christeson is out in the deep black with us, and we all get to take care of the regular maintenance and upkeep of Bravo 2.” 

The door stops hissing and bings, signaling that Ray and Walt won’t die a horrible death of asphyxiation if they go into the bay. Walt bangs on the control pad, and they walk through the opening doors. The bay smell of recycled air and motor oil, and a little bit of steel, the smells Ray’s hindbrain always associated with leaving the ship. It smelt like home. 

Ray and Walt went through all the pre-flight protocols, checking their way through two lists and a verbal confirmation with the ship’s AI. They finish the last of the checklists and launch the shuttle towards the second level and the broken turbine. Walt’s humming something to himself, an old spacer song that might even date from when humanity started leaving Earth.

“Like them I come out diggin’,” Ray joins in on the chorus, before dropping out to let Walt continue on in the passenger seat.

Walt has the right voice for old songs, a sort of twang Ray knows he’s too nasal for, prone to pressing the song too hard to ever really settle into. Even Brad, who hates anything written before the turn of the last century, bops his head along when Walt started up. 

It took them most of the song to get to the broken turbine, slowing down as they got closer so that Ray could pull them up close enough that they could work on it without actually bumping the ship, which Nate and the rest of command would have their hides for. “Alright,” Ray says, after one last miniscule adjustment. “Go get the suit on to go poking around in there and I’ll keep us in place.”

“Why’d it always have to be me in the suit?” Walt asks, but he’s already pulling it out from the closet and shaking it into something that resembled a spacesuit. 

“Because I’m a better driver than you,” Ray says, even though they both already know the answer. “Now go out there and space monkey the shit out of that turbine so we can go back and tell Nate and Brad we did our job and we won’t all die out here in the bleak vastness of space.”

Walt rolls his eyes before he slips the helmet on and steps out to the back of the shuttle, the atmospheric chamber little bigger than a closet. There’s eight turbines in the Bravo, they’d have to be down to just one before they were in any real danger. Ray, Walt, and everyone on the ship know that, which is why Trombley is messing with water filtration instead of being pulled off to see to the matter. One broken turbine is an inconvenience that needs fixing soon, but it’s not life or death.

“Could it be that laaaady luck has smiled herself on me,” Ray sang to himself, tapping his fingers on the consul in front of him, watching the display where he could see Walt’s white spacesuit against the grey of Bravo. The cord tethering him to the shuttle cut the picture in half, stretching off screen. 

Walt would probably be able to knock out whatever piece of space junk got stuck in there with just his own two hands and the kit that came with the repair spacesuits. Anything more serious and they’d fly back to the main part of the ship and Trombley’d get pulled off of the filtration project and Nate’d send a whole fire team out to address it. Just because it wasn’t life or death yet didn’t mean it couldn’t be. In space everything was fine until it abruptly wasn’t. Ray’d been a spacer his whole life, he knew how it was. 

“Spacy little cowgirl, come a little closer to me,” Ray sang as Walt pulled back from the broken turbine and hit the reactivation button on the outside of the casing. The light under the blades blinks red, and then green. The turbine itself starts spinning as Walt pulls himself back to the shuttle using the cord. 

“Yeaaah, thatta boy Walt,” Ray says, tapping Walt on the screen. 

Today’s not the day they die from some turbine related mishap. Hopefully not tomorrow either. They’ll die one day though, probably exploring new planets, fixing their ship, from a leak or something stupid like acid-spitting cows. Ray didn’t go into the Explorers for the retirement plan. But it’s not too bad, Ray thinks, whistling as Walt comes back in through the atmospheric chamber. There might be better ways to die, but there weren’t any better ways to live.

 **+1) The Thong Song**

The thing about Kuwait is that it's fucking boring. They've been listening to the same twelve CDs on goddamn repeat for weeks and Brad's obsession with Journey has morphed from mockable to a possible sign of homicidal mania to background noise. They're going through one of Lilley's mixes when Ray has an epiphany.

"Homes, this would be a sweetass song for a lap dance." Brad is ignoring him, but Brad is probably replotting his map for the seven bajillionth time so the LT'll check "yes" on the fourth period note Brad passed. Ray understands the Iceman has other concerns.

"Your mom gave me a lap dance last night!" Chaffin shouts over from where he and Garza are cleaning their weapons.

Trombley's looking at him all creepy like and confused, but that's pretty much par for the course. The corner of Walt's lip is hiding a smile, but Ray thinks he can coax it out. "Thighs like what, what, what, baby move your butt, butt, butt," he sings along, dancing a little bit with the beat. Walt ducks his head and starts picking at the lining of his cot, obviously trying not to laugh. Ray officially considers it a victory.

"But seriously," Ray adds, ignoring Brad's snort, "It would be hot, having a nice pair of titties in my face while a stripper worked this song." A thought strikes him. "Yo Lilley, what sort of kinky shit you got preserved on your camera, you perverted motherfucker?"

Lilley, who in some ways is as big a tech geek as Brad, has headphones on and is fiddling with his iPod (technically contraband, like Ray cares). He raises his eyebrows at Ray, but he obviously hadn't heard anything besides his name. Ray waves him off and turns back to Walt.

"That's really what this camp needs," Ray says, mostly to keep the conversation going. "Lap dances. Good for morale."

"If you say so Ray." Walt says. Ray's just about to launch into a monologue on how large, firm asses are not only key for a good lap dance but also an evolutionary _advantage_ they should all select for, when he comes to a realization.

"Walt, please don't tell me that you've never got a lap dance." Walt blushes. Ray stares at him for a good five seconds, because what the hell sort of Recon Marine still _blushes_.

"I got a lap dance while I was on libo in Australia," Trombley offers, and Ray just hopes like hell that the stripper charged an extra psychopath fee.

"Well, we can't have you rolling into a war and possibly getting your head blown off without you ever even having got a fucking lap dance," Ray decides. "If we were back in the States I'd get you a working girl, but since we're a good fifty klicks out from the middle of bumfuck nowhere, we'll just have to make do."

Ray plops himself astride Walt's lap and starts dancing to the song. "Baby make your booty go da da da da" is blaring tinnily from the speakers and Ray decides to just fucking rock out because what if (and Ray hears his Grandma's voice for just a second, saying "God _forbid_ ") Walt actually does get killed? Even if Ray doesn't have a set of EEs to thrust in Walt's face, he can at least be enthusiastic. Walt's hands settle on Ray's hips almost instinctively and Ray makes a porn face at him while the entire platoon cat calls.

"See," he tells Walt, still dancing, "I knew you'd be a natural at this." Walt just looks wide eyed and a bit shocked, but he hasn't pushed Ray off yet. Walt's a big boy; if he didn't like it, he'd do something about it.

"Person, stop sexually assaulting Hassar," Brad says, still typing away on his laptop. "You're wearing a Marine Corps uniform, none of that Navy shit."

Ray winks at Walt before getting off and sitting next to him on the cot. The CD goes to the next track, and J.Lo starts singing about still being from the block.

"That was really gay," Trombley tells him.

Ray rolls his eyes and nudges Walt on the shoulder, friendly like. Walt nudges a bit back. "Shut up Trombley," Ray says.

***

Walt’s face is all scrunched up and his body is curled protectively around the after action report, like he’s trying to hide it. Ray’s leaning against the back of the Humvee when he decides that somebody’s gotta do something about Walt. Brad can be relied on to eventually repress himself out of any emotional difficulties and Trombley’s Whopper Junior and doesn’t understand that there might be anything he should feel sorry about. Reporter is shell shocked by everything, but he thinks he’s a passive observer and washes his hands of guilt with that excuse. But Walt, Walt needs some help. He needs someone to distract him from the car that didn’t stop and the man he killed.

Because Ray’s a good friend, he humps Walt’s head. It’s like a lap dance, only Ray’s pretty sure if he sat down he’d crash, and Walt doesn’t need Ray to collapse in his lap. 

“Feel the love, Walt baby,” Ray coos, extra put on to try and provoke a reaction, just in case the fact that he’s thrusting his MOP covered dick against Walt’s kevlar doesn’t get him what he’s looking for.

Walt shoves him away, still hunched over his stupid piece of paper. “Leave me the fuck alone,” he say, which is at least better than silence even if it wasn’t exactly what Ray was hoping for. 

If he’s being honest, Ray’s not sure exactly what he was hoping for. It’s not like Ray can go back in time and tell Walt to shoot to warn instead of kill. They’re in a middle of a fucking war, which is practically the very definition of no do overs. Ray can’t go back in time to fix Walt, and his attempts to do so in the present have been an abject failure, depressing both of them. He turns to harass Brad instead, because by this point they’re probably common law married and Brad has to put up with his shit.

***

Brad’s playing at Jewish Santa, whipping out Jugs and Chef Boyardee like they’ve all been good little boys. Ray’s making a fucking mess of himself because they survived and Ray needs to blow off steam too sometimes. If he does it by getting ravioli sauce all over himself then that’s between him and any vaguely Freudian impulses he might be harboring. Ray’s never been a particularly neat eater, not enough food on the table growing up means he tended to attack when it was there. He’s playing it up for Reporter though, eating with his hands because he wants to see how much he can get him to believe. Overall, the sun is shining, everyone’s gathered around eating ravioli, no one’s shooting or shouting at them, and at some point a nearly fresh issue of Jugs will make its way towards Ray, Brad-willing. Ray’s feeling pretty good about life.

Then Espera, who Ray is convinced gets some sort of sick, twisted joy out of ruining otherwise enjoyable downtime with upsetting truths, says, “Shoot some civilians and you get a reputation. Right?”

And they were talking about Trombley’s general psychoses and specifically his fucked up nickname, but Trombley’s not the only one with innocent blood on his hands. And they all know that. Walt knows that. 

“Walt,” Ray says not even bothering to swallow because Walt’s finally back with them, he’s been talking, a little, but what if this is too much, what if this is the BB pellet that slams the camel’s hump into fragments of bone, skin, blood, and muscle, “Walt. He didn't mean that.”

But Walt’s looking at him and laughing. It’s the first time Ray’s seen him laugh since he killed those civilians.

“You’re a fuckin’ messed up hick,” Walt says, delighted by his observation and how Ray still hasn’t swallowed his mouthful of canned pasta. “You can’t even eat ravioli.” 

This is patently untrue. Ray’s managed to get down more chow than anyone else in their little circle. “I eat ravioli,” Ray protests through his mouthful.

Everyone laughs, but more importantly Walt smiles. If Ray had known that he could get Walt to smile by getting messy and making a fool of himself he would have smeared civilian food all over his face days ago, like beauty pageant makeup gone wrong. Hell, he would have tossed in a rant about the importance of over processed foods just for kicks. He still might. 

Ray swallows his ravioli and wipes his messy face on his arm. “Didn’t know you were such a big fan of Italian,” Reporter jokes. The rest of the conversation has moved on to talk of nicknames, and Poke is insisting he graduated from the Depot with a guy called Widowmaker and how that’s more badass than Iceman. 

“I’m a man of cosmopolitan tastes,” Ray tells Reporter absently, because Walt’s still grinning a bit and that’s way more important than Reporter’s attempts at bonding.

Ray stands, casually tilting his head at Walt, asking him to follow. Brad clocks them leaving and will likely want a debrief on Walt’s mental state afterwards, but that’s for afterwards. Ray’s got some investigating to do first. 

There’s not really true privacy in a camp full of Marines, but they go to the other side of the Humvee, at least out of sight and easy eavesdropping range.

“You unfucked now?” Ray leans against the Humvee, arms crossed. It’s not like Walt doesn’t know why Ray wanted to talk to him.

“Still in Iraq, aren’t we?” Walt responds, facing him and mirroring Ray’s posture. 

Ray nods his acknowledgement of Walt’s point. It’s likely only a matter of time before Godfather and Chaos have them run their next suicide mission. “Gonna be better about carrying your weapon though?” Rays asks. Brad frets like the Jewish mother he is at heart, and he had ordered Ray to keep watch on Walt, to make sure that he didn’t commit suicide by wandering off into Iraq unarmed.

“Yeah, I’ve got it,” Walt says. “I just wasn’t...wasn’t in a good place for a bit.” 

Ray wishes that they had time for Walt to process, to come to grips with what he’d done, all the bullshit they got told in briefings and mandatory pre-deployment powerpoints. “Don’t get yourself killed, then I’ll only have Brad and the Reporter to talk to,” Ray says instead, because they’re still in Iraq and if wishes were civilian chow and fresh porn Brad’s backpack would have been bigger than the size of the entire platoon, if not the battalion.

“What about Trombley?” Walt asks, grinning again. 

Ray snorts, because he knows the AO now. Walt wants something to laugh at, wants Ray to be a little outrageous, a little too much, pushing to see what he can get away with, but always having Walt’s back. “Please, we call Encino Man subhuman, but Trombley’s a little psychopath, did you hear what he said about fucking--”

Walt uncrosses his arms. “You’ve got sauce…” He reaches out and wipes his thumb across Ray’s lower lip. 

It’s nothing like how Ray’s mom used to wipe his mouth as a kid. Walt’s thumb lingers. It lingers with _intent_. And holy shit, maybe Ray doesn’t know the AO at all.

Ray has no idea what his face is doing, but Walt smiles again and Ray’s mouth opens involuntarily. Walt’s thumb slips a few millimeters in and his face flushes.

Unfortunately for Ray’s cock, which is one hundred percent on board with whatever Walt’s going to do next, Brad shouts, “Person, Hassar, get your asses back over here, playtime’s over.” 

Walt pulls his hand back like it’s been burned. “Coming Brad,” he shouts back. 

For once Ray is at loss for words. He follows Walt back around the Humvee to the slightly depleted group of Marines. He’s all flipped around, like he’s been just half an inch off from true this whole time and things have finally snapped into place. He doesn’t know how he missed it. Walt starts singing something under his breath, and it takes Ray half a second to realize it’s the Thong Song. Ray laughs, wrapping his own arms around himself to somehow try and express the laughter he couldn’t stop even if he wanted to. He doesn’t know what’s going on with him and Walt, not yet, not exactly, but he can’t wait to find out.


End file.
